Matthew Brown_65871

Dave, I remember you were one of the fireworks guys from Dallas. Good luck.

Hi guys. I posted a year or so ago on here re rental software solutions. I grew up in a computer rental business in the DC area, now I have a Salesforce consulting business and we've built rental solutions using Salesforce as the platform for customers. I don't know what the standard is for camera rental but if you're evaluating solutions (and no I don't get a commission) I'd consider the Force.com platform. It's not right for everyone, but SF is now the world's 4th largest software company and they've put over a billion dollars into developing the platform. There literally is nothing it can't do (I tell customers they are only limited by their creativity and their wallet). If you're looking for rental software, look at Salesforce if: You're >1M in annual revenue You want one system to do everything You can afford 5-10k/yr in software license fees and 10-30k in setup costs. (this is for a biz 1-2M) If that's not you, I get it. If that didn't scare you off, if you use the Force.com platform you can create a world class scaleable system with low operating costs. It won't break, you don't have to maintain it and it's 100% secure. Salesforce Licenses Overview Professional ~ 65/mo/user - No coding, no record types (you can't use this it's too limited) Enterprise ~ 125/mo/user - Supports customization by Apex code (no limitations) Force.com ~ 25/mo/user - Supports customization by Apex code, no leads or opportunities objects (no CRM) You can mix and match Force and Enterprise licenses. They make you buy one EE. What this means is that you can manage your entire pipeline (leads and opportunities) with one EE license and then run the rental process using Force.com licenses. This is a good deal. You're getting the world's best platform for 300/yr/user. There are a couple apps out there (applications built in Salesfore) for the rental industry, but I honestly haven't explored them too much. If we ever get around to packaging an app I'll post it here. And to those looking at solutions built in php or Wordpress (wp is php), I'd be careful. I've done a ton of WP development. It's not an enterprise software. It's not secure, it's not scaleable, it breaks a lot, it's easily hacked and you'll be debugging it for the rest of your life. Oh, and if you're looking at SF vs Microsoft Dynamics or Great Planes, we get a lot of business of customers abandoning those products... The Microsoft stuff sucks. Their motto is first in a market, not best in a market. I forgot Quickbooks. You can integrate Salesforce to QB online easily and to the desktop too. Desktop is a greater level of effort. Online integration expect to spend 1k/yr on integration 0 setup. Desktop 1500/yr and 2-3k setup. You will create and distribute your invoices from SF, then as they are received in QB, the status is updated in SF "paid". So all the work is done in SF, your book keeper just records payment in QB and the update is dynamic. If anyone out there is trying to grow their biz - def look at Force.com. If I had a rental biz, I'd be using it. And if and when I/we ever get around to building a rental app I'll post it back here. That will be a plug. This is just sharing. :)